Today’s data centers are often space constrained and challenged by how to power and cool a complex infrastructure. Often systems are not flexible enough to adapt as business needs change, especially when mission-critical requirements absolutely must be met without fail. HP’s Blade Link redefines blade scaling by allowing you to really easily join together and manage multiple blades to create 2, 4 and 8 socket systems that best suit your business needs. Shawn Kroeger, Hardware Design Engineer in our Enterprise Systems Lab helped create the new HP Integrity blade servers and demonstrates how simple it is to scale up with Blade Link and reveals some of the benefits realized (9x performance in half the footprint for example!). Shawn also takes you on a complete tour of inside and out of the new Integrity server blade if you want to dig into the processors, iLO, DIMM slots, NICs and more.

We’ve also included Bruce Henderson from the UNIX systems lab in this video to explain how HP-UX offers optimized performance with the new Integrity servers. Learn more about 3 key things: 1) Insight Dynamics VSE for maximizing utilization of server resources 2) Serviceguard to maximize availability and service level of resources in your environment and 3) Insight Control Manager to deploy and optimize resources effectively. Here’s the video:

This is the final blog in my three part Meet the HP Integrity Server Engineers series. Part 1 addressed the Common Modular Infrastructure and Part 2 digs into Flex Fabric and resiliency enhancements of Integrity. Each video is under 7 minutes in length. I hope you find them useful.

Duncan Campbell provided a get great keynote presentation at Technology at Work 2010 where he showed specific examples and used cases on how converging your infrastructure can deliver tangible benefits.

We've posted serveral topics on Mission-Critical Musings about how HP has accelerated innovation to address IT sprawl and ballooning data complexity challenges enterprises face today. Recently HP announced new Integrity Servers, updates to HP-UX 11i v3, and the industry's first mission-critical converged infrastructure. The innovation doesn't stop there. If you haven't heard about it yet, HP has a major event coming up in June in Las Vegas -- the HP Technology Forum. HP subject matter experts and strategists will discuss what's new with Converged Infrastructure, the standards-based, integrated solutions and services driving the data center of the future.

The HP Technology Forum was developed by technical people for technical people. This year, to balance the hands-on labs, solution overviews, and technical deep-dives, the conference offers a dedicated Business Track. Sessions will focus on technology implementation and integration, plus reducing complexity, resource requirements, and costs in order to shift IT budget toward innovation. Special topics: data de-duplication, sustainable IT, migration issues, cloud computing, security, business continuity, and more. Headlining each of the 2010 technology tracks, Super Sessions will feature HP strategists and subject matter experts providing context for breakouts in this year's key technology areas. In addition to discussing emerging IT trends, presenters will talk about critical challenges to overcome for optimal returns on technology investments. The 2010 Expo has been completely redesigned with a sharp new look and layout for showcasing technologies, solutions, and services from over 90 of the world's leading IT companies

In addition to presentations by some of today's IT thought leaders, we'll also have performances by two of today's comedy greats...

Jake Johannsen: A favorite on the Late Show with David Letterman, Johannsen's talent as a comedian, writer, and actor has been celebrated by People Magazine and the American Comedy Awards.

Jim Gaffigan: One of the best-known comedians today, Gaffigan co-authored Pale Force for NBC.com with Conan O'Brien and has acted in high-profile shows including That 70's Show, Sex and the City, and Law & Order.

This year all of the 40+ hands-on labs will be located in a single hall, making it easier for you to participate in more of these popular sessions. Individual sessions fill up quickly, so log in to the Session Scheduler early to take your pick and reserve your place. The 2010 roster of 2-hour labs includes:

New this year, you may submit requests for one-to-one meetings with HP subject matter experts directly via the Session Scheduler. If you've already registered, log in to see a complete list of HP participants and request a meeting.

I’d like to share with you some information straight from our engineering team about our new HP Integrity servers that we announced at the end of April. In this first video, Arlen Roesner, lead mechanical engineer in our HP Enterprise Systems Lab, talks about the common modular infrastructure of the new Superdome 2 platform. He discusses how it is built on the new Blade Scale architecture, reducing the number of individual components a data center needs to certify and carry, helping customers save considerable money and time. Arlen demonstrates the commonality of the C7000 platform and the Superdome 2 platform including use of the same onboard administrator, common power supplies, cooling and more – watch him swap a few items out in this video to show how easy it is to do, even while the system is powered on.

If you struggle with the issues associated with having lots of different platforms running on different operating systems to support a vast array of specific applications in your business, we invite you to check out HP’s new way of thinking – mission-critical converged infrastructure. Please tell us what you think, and what else you’d like to hear about from our HP engineering team.

Wolfgang Wittmer, EMEA VP & GM ESSN, Hewlett Packard, recently had a great opportunity to interview 4 key ISV partners during the Technology at Work 2010 press release, in Frankfurt Germany on April 26th. During this interview he was able to get their views on current customer challenges and their perceptions around a new converged infrastructure environment. Participating on the ISV panel were:

SummaryGuenther Stuerner (Oracle) response to what does Oracle see as one of their main customer challenges? “IT is still very complicated and complex (hardware and software) and they are under extreme time pressures with more complex systems with fewer resources supporting them. This is resulting in less innovation. Oracle sees Converged Infrastructure as an enabler to bring IT staff back into better alignment, allowing an improved focus on innovation.”

David Hughes (SAS) response to how SAS customers running complex high end analytical infrastructure are being challenged? “It’s all about data explosion – IDC stated that in 2008 the amount of data we are acquiring on this planet exceeded our ability to store it. This has lead to complexities which has increased costs for maintaining data and has left less for innovation. In 2008 business analytics became mission critical for real time analytics. So being able to leverage complexity, as opposed to becoming a victim of it, in a cost constrained environment, seems to be the growing trend with SAS customers.”

Edgar Jager (SAP) response to do SAP customers focus more on return on investment, more that what they were doing 2 to 3 years ago? “Yes even more so, it’s about time and implementation. What we see for larger customers is a lot more consolidation as they strive to become the best in breeds applications. Our customer needs to be able to run their businesses in the best possible way.”

Gordon Fleming (QAD) in response to what does Converged Infrastructure mean to QAD customers? “In the past 18 months the economy has been very challenging – Companies IT resources now have to scale and adapt to new business environments. For Converged Infrastructure, Scalability is a key enabler for allowing customers to adapt as their business recovers and grows. They will need Flexibility around which applications they will host themselves and what they will connect to over the “Cloud”. And Efficiency, not just energy consumption, but also resources needed.”

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I work as a Master Architect in HP Servers R & D group. I work with teams spread across the lab and outside to build solutions which are highly available on HP-UX, OpenVMS and Mission Critical Linux platforms. In particular I contribute to develop HP Serviceguard clusters, HP-UX Security and Middleware products. I have been with HP for last 17 years and have exposure to HA/DR field from both R & D and customer perspectives.

Kirk Bresniker is the Vice President/Chief Technologist for HP Business Critical Systems where he has technical responsibility for all things Mission Critical, including HP-UX, NonStop and scalable x86 platforms. He joined HP in 1989 after graduating from Santa Clara University and has been an HP Fellow since 2008.

Cynthia is part of the HP ExpertOne team. ExpertOne offers professional IT training and certifications from infrastructure refresh to areas that span across the datacenter like Cloud and Converged Infrastructure.

Hi, I´m part of the HP Servers team and work as Product Marketing Manager with a focus on mission-critical offerings. I´m interested in the business value our technology brings to customers and I'll be blogging about their stories and how our portfolio evolves to help them succeed in today´s market.

I have worked with NonStop systems since 1982. I am a Master Technologist for HP and am part of the IT SWAT organization, the Cloud SWAT and work with HP Labs. I report into the Enterprise Solutions and Architecture organization.

Joe Androlowicz is a Technical Communications and Marketing manager in HP’s NonStop Product Division. Joe is a 25 year journeyman in information systems design, instructional technologies and multimedia development. He left Apple Computer for Tandem Computers to help launch G03 and hasn’t looked back yet. He previously managed the program management team for the NonStop Education and
Training Center and drove the development and growth of the NonStop Certification
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Luke Oda is a member of the HP's BCS Marketing team. With a primary focus on marketing programs that support HP's BCS portfolio. His interests include all things mission-critical and the continuing innovation that HP demonstrates across the globe.

I am the Superdome 2 Product Manager. My interest is to learn how mission critical platform helps customers and would also like to share my thoughts on how Superdome has been helping customers and will continue to do so.

I work in the HP Servers marketing group, managing a marketing team responsible for marketing solutions for enterprise customers who run mission-critical workloads and depend on HP to keep their business continuously running.

Mohan Parthasarathy is a Technical Architect in the HP-UX lab. His primary focus currently is in the core kernel, platform enablement and virtualization areas of HP-UX. Mohan has worked on various modules of HP-UX, including networking protocol stacks, drivers, core kernel and virtualization

As a Managing Consultant for HP’s Enterprise Solution & Architecture group, I collaborate with client business and IT senior management to understand, prioritize and architect advanced use of data and information, drawing insights required to make informed business decisions. My current focus leverages event-driven business intelligence design techniques and technologies to identify patterns, anticipate outcomes and proactively optimize business response creating a differentiated position in the marketplace for the client.

Wendy Bartlett is a Distinguished Technologist in HP’s NonStop Enterprise Division, and focuses on dependability – security and availability - for the NonStop server line. She joined Tandem in 1978. Her other main area of interest is system architecture evolution. She has an M.S. degree in computer science from Stanford University.